$68 billion for a rail line. However my stat for 178 million per mile came from a direct line, which is about 381 miles between the two cities (divide total price over distance from SF to LA and it is about 178 million per mile). However I am reading the system actually has many stops and is 800 miles total. I should read the articles first. Cost per mile would be half than the numbers I quoted. My mistake. Plus I’m not sure what % of the cost goes to the 24 stations.
24 stations in 800 miles rather obviates the ‘high speed’ element.
How so?
If you think the train sits for a long time at the intermediate stations, like an airliner, it doesn’t. I’ve ridden high-speed trains in Germany. When you’re almost at your stop, you get up, grab your bags, and wait by the door. (There are doors at both ends of every car, remember.) Train stops, some people get off, some get on, and you’re on your way. I never timed it, but we were probably stopped for less than a minute. You lose some time to deceleration and acceleration, but it’s not much.
There’s plenty to debate about whether this is a good idea in the U.S., but “there are stops along the way” isn’t a deal-breaker.
As an example of cost the first phase of Britain’s new High Speed Line was estimated to cost 50billion US Dollars. It’s a 100 mile train from London (over 8 million residents in the city proper) to Birmingham (over 1 million residents). There are two intermediate stops- one in inner city London for connections to the airport and business districts, and one in suburban Birmingham at the international airport. If built later phases will make the 350 mile journey to Glasgow.
Of the 50 billion estimate for phase one only 5 billion is for the High Speed technology. Originally the project was purely about easing overcrowding on the existing rail network, with building a new line the only sensible way of increasing capacity. It was decided to make it a high speed line because at 10% of the cost it adds a lot of value for very little. These type of high speed trains are compatible with existing lines, and will typically use existing tracks for the last few miles into the city centres. Maglev technology is faster but useless if you want integration with the existing rail network. The predominance of freight on America’s train infrastructure might make that the better option but who knows.
One of the big advantages of the type of HS rail Britain is developing is that it allows them to segregate slow commuter lines from faster intercity ones. Segregation leads to efficiency and it is expected that the capacity on the old slow lines will increase massively without any money getting spent on them. This is a great stick to beat killjoys from smaller towns with who complain that they get the blight of having the high speed trains flying by but none of the benefit as it doesn’t stop near them. Unfortunately the UK media and the government have been hopeless at educating the public on what this scheme is all about. It is *not *about making a 90 minute journey half an hour faster.
Overall the point I’m trying to make here is that high speed rail that runs from coast to coast (and can never compete with planes even with their horrible security measures) is a silly distraction from more practical schemes like High Speed or even average speed new lines in the Eastern seaboard. I’m sure Boston to Washington isn’t the only suitable corridor.
What, do they cause sonic booms or something?
I don’t think the idea is that stops are the deal breaker, but rather a stop every 33 miles (on average) is the deal-breaker, even if on the map, it’s a little different reality.
But is there ANY real reason to stop a high-speed train in Gilroy, Palmdale, Merced, Riverside, Corona, Murrieta, Escondido or Burbank Airport, just to name a few that seem superfluous?
Is it really, though? As it stands, yes, it seems so, but how hard would it be to build a maglev/rail hybrid? A maglev track with slots to clear the wheel carriage, raised up just enough to function well on street-grade tracks. The transition zones would be rather complex, but they would only be at either end of the maglev runs. Developing maglev/rail hybrids (which would not be 300mph-superfast) might be just what maglev would need to, umm, get off the ground.
Not even the OP.
No it’s just that any debate on this topic in Britain is going to degenerate into shouting pretty soon: "The government wants to build this white elephant so bankers and some other rich wankers can get a train that’s 15 minutes faster, while us plebs will be crushed like sardines in a tin on 150 year old train tracks getting slower & slower!!!
When in actual fact taking the longer distance trains off the existing lines will actually do a lot for the residents of smaller towns/ cities. I’ve also anecdotally heard that the high speed trains will have relatively low fares- hopefully this will happen as once it opens the only alternative will be slow bus or the hassle of 1.5 hours airport security for a 200 mile flight.
How else are you going to sell the project to the good burghers of Buttfuck, Mississippi- but yes it will defeat the point of the project pretty quickly if you go down that route. Politics in France meant that their high speed network serves too many small cities.
With the exception of Merced, which is in the Central Valley, where the train may be able to out-pace the traffic on I-5 and CA-99, the rest of those towns are in hilly or urban areas, where the HSR train will be about as fast as a conventional train, so making stops at every politically convenient place can be accomodated.
Don’t be silly; I’ve travelled on the Intercities and the London Underground. But 24 stations in 800 miles is about one every 33 miles. At normal TGV speeds (~200 mph) that’s about once every 9 minutes. And so many stops would drastically increase the journey time by about half an hour per minute of stop. Plus time for acceleration and deceleration. That’s assuming every train stops at every station, of course. The planners need to be ruthless and cull the stations at which the trains stop. Either remove them entirely or set the timetables so that each train only stops every fourth station or so.
I’m not sure what “half an hour per minute of stop” means, exactly, especially since you want to add the acceleration and deceleration in addition to that half hour. Each stop seems more on the order of a few minutes to me.
I tried searching for exact (or even ballpark) numbers once before when this subject came up, and couldn’t find anything. I think a lot depends on details. If the train starts in downtown L.A., and makes two stops on its way out of town (maybe a park-and-ride type facility) before it gets on the dedicated high-speed track, that probably won’t affect the journey time very much.
My main point was that we don’t need to reinvent the wheel. There are services like this already operating. I’m sure they know how long it takes to slow down, stop, and speed up again. I don’t have those numbers, but I assume the people who have done the planning do. I hope they can find the right balance between speed and serving the intermediate communities.
I don’t think the proposed stops is that big an issue, to be honest. The stops planned in the Centaral Valley (Fresno, Tulare, Bakersfield) are not going to make a big difference where the train is expected to make top speeds.
The problem is where it will not be able to make high speeds. Think of the project in 3 segments:
- SF to Los Banos - 125 miles - urban and/or mountainous - no high speeds.
- Los Banos to Grapevine - 200 miles - rural and flat - high speeds except for nearing stops.
- Grapevine to LA - 80 miles - urban and/or mountainous again, no high speeds.
The point I am making is that more than about half of this thing is going to be in areas where high speeds are not going to be allowed or are not feasible due to terrain.
Also, to the point 1224rattusrattus made about demand and easing overcrowding - that is not an issue in CA - the current train has more than enough capacity because no one rides it between SF and LA. The reason is that is takes too long, and airports serve this market well. I dont see that changing since the HSR will not be able to compete with the airlines on price and schedule.
I don’t know how fast the trains accelerate, but a car can go from 0-100mph in a quarter of a mile. I don’t know if trains can accelerate/decelerate as fast as cars can.
I’m only counting about 10 stations between SF & LA.
…No. They don’t.
I did a bit more googling, and found some interesting results. This page does the math for a superfast train, stopping from 357 mph, waiting in the station for 5 minutes, then accelerating back to the same speed in 10.4 minutes. It uses 2.2 mph/s for acceleration and deceleration. However…
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I think 357 mph was chosen as the record speed achieved by a train; regular service is nowhere near that fast. The acceleration figure is probably also exaggerated. I found figures for the Shinkansen more on the order of 1.2 mph/s.
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In my experience, the dwell time in a station is nothing like 5 minutes.
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The train will cover some distance during the deceleration and acceleration. To figure the impact on journey time you have to subtract the time to cover that distance if the train didn’t stop.
In general, it sounds like a stop would add about 5 minutes to the trip.
Have you found specifics for what the speeds would be in those areas, or are you speculating? I took an ICE from Brussels to Frankfurt once. It was night, but I could tell we were going through a series of short tunnels. I suspect there were a series of rolling hills, and rather than have that roller-coaster weightless feeling at the top of each, they’d just tunneled through so the crest wasn’t as sudden.
There are clever to get through some terrain.
I rode the Empire Builder from Seattle to Milwaukee, an it has several short sections and several rather long sections. Of course it had to stop at every one, because there is one train a day. If they had three or four trains a day, the trains could realistically alternate some of the smaller stops, which HSR could do as well, assuming it could have low enough fares to draw high enough demand to support multiple runs per day.
Yeah, it is. I travel frequently between Nanjing and Shanghai, and the ticket prices are the same for every train, regardless of the number of stops. The number of stops have a huge effect of the total time of what’s relatively a short distance trip. At a 300 km/h cruising speed, extra stops (if I’m stuck on the wrong train) mean two hours and twenty minutes instead of one hour and twenty minutes for the same trip, on the same track. The only difference is the number of stops, and the time involved for stopping. As you indicate, stops at most stations are only two minutes, but as long as five minutes for very large stations.
For a faraway city (e.g., Beijing) the number of stops makes things progressively worse, of course. I often remind people that Beijing is only 3.5 hours away, but I need to remember to temper myself by adding, “but only if you get on the right train.”
The biggest impediment to HSR in the US are our property rights. For HSR to work you need the pathway to be in relatively straight line, with minimal turns. That means that the railway or the government would need to acquire or take by eminent domain, large swaths of land that is currently held by private land owners. Given our judicial system, any attempt to take all of the property needed in a pathway would be tied up in the courts for decades. And any private effort would become too costly, as the existing landowners would have all of the leverage within the path. You can’t decide to make a large turn in the path because of some uncooperative landowner, that would defeat the purpose of the HSR as it would require the train to slow down to make the turn.
Yes - a small percentage at the top end of performance (and price) can do this.
Trains are heavy, so a train capable of neck-snapping acceleration would need an engine of enormous power. Train designers have generally decided to accept modest acceleration (which passengers tend to appreciate) and the associated lower capital and operating costs.